This is a bit early this time, as I have a couple mid year lists coming in the next week that I've been working a lot on, but there's still some quality projects in here released in the past couple weeks!
At 23 songs and 77 minutes long, this is way longer than it has any right to be. Teyana still comes through with quite a few highlights, even through all the filler. “Come Back to Me” features Rick Ross sounding great over this sample based instrumental, and even has her four year old daughter on the chorus. “Lowkey” with Erykah Badu is a sensual slow jam that contains Erykah providing a great and memorable feature. “Bare Wit Me” is another highlight, especially with the incredible music video that features Teyana and dancers dressed in suits similar to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” video, except with brighter colors. The outro, “We Got Love” with Lauryn Hill, is still one of my favorite songs of 2020, especially with Lauryn’s moving spoken word outro on the importance of self love. But the problem is that’s only 4 songs out of 22, which doesn’t leave the album in a favorable spot. If you want to find some quality R&B tunes, it’s worth a listen to skip around and find the great tracks, but for not much else.
Jockstrap is a weird, pop and electronic duo from the UK. They have some insanely out there electronic songs, such as the opener “Robert”. But they also have loads of piano, and even some violin on here, courtesy of Georgia who is classically trained. She would send these piano demos to Taylor, who would then put these insane electronics all over them and turn them into full songs. You can hear the training and beauty in Georgia’s voice, especially on “Acid” and “Yellow in Green”. Taylor’s weird electronics and Georgia’s ethereal voice come together on the next track, “The City”, with Georgia performing a beautiful ballad during the first half and then Taylor turning it into a groovy electronic song for the second half. I’m not quite sure how many people are going to enjoy this, as it’s pretty weird and all over the place, but I’m personally enjoying it more with each listen and definitely recommend it if you want some outside of the box music.
At only 25 years old, Phoebe’s music contains more life lessons and emotion than the vast majority of artists older than her. She captures the aimlessness and depression of many millennials with her brand of soft indie rock in the same way that Frank Ocean does with his art-pop/R&B sound. Unlike Frank’s music, Punisher didn’t quite stick with me the same way his does. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a high quality album, and I think many people will absolutely love this, I just don’t yet. Her vocals can shine really well, like on “Moon Song” or the minimal ballad that is “Halloween”. The album does become a bit redundant, especially if you tune out the lyrics, but that’s kinda the point and feeling of the aimlessness that her music gives off. This is an album I’d recommend to many people though, of all ages. She has a great voice, some detailed and accessible production, and meaningful songs. There’s nothing big that she’s lacking, and hopefully this album draws a lot of people to her music.
Many people know Baauer from making “Harlem Shake”, but he’s also become one of the biggest and most acclaimed artists in the electronic scene. I’ve also never listened to any full project EDM related, so this is a bit outside my comfort zone. There’s definitely some standout tracks on here. “Magic” feels like an electronic version of a horror movie soundtrack, with these menacing strings that pop in and out of the track. “Planck” is an ethereal opening track and welcomes the listener into this world that he’s built. The album also ends well with the song “Group”, another fast paced, maximalist electronic banger. The production overall is really high quality and proves once again that the top electronic producers are better than most top producers in other genres. As a whole, the traditional EDM build and drop did get old, but I can see how people would love it. The only song that I can comfortably say is bad is “Home”, which is the only track with a feature. It feels so out of place and it sonically breaks up the entire album and momentum that he’s built to that point. Overall though, if you like electronic and EDM music, I see no reason why you wouldn’t love this.
6lack comes through with six more high quality songs of his unique trap R&B style. The project’s last two songs provide one of the best endings to a project in 2020! “Elephant in the Room” features this gradual beat with these amazing talkbox vocals in the background, while 6lack proves that he knows where and how to place his vocals with the beat. But the ending song, “Outside”, shows him doing something he’s never done before, a straight piano ballad. His songs have always had this extreme darkness that makes his music feel constricting, but this shows him at his most bare and open. Even when the barely audible drums come in during the second verse, his vocals remain the most important part of the song by a country mile. The other four songs on here are still high quality songs, but they’re not any different than what he’s done before and most likely won’t get him many new fans. This feels like a better version of what many artists have done with making smaller projects to hold fans off until their album, and hopefully his album lives up this project, and maybe even exceeds it.
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